


Truth, Like Death

by localwitchgoblin



Series: There Existed an Addiction to Blood [1]
Category: Vampire: The Masquerade, World of Darkness (Games)
Genre: Campaign Epilogue, Experimental Style, Freeform, Gen, Gore, Malkavian Brain Weirdness, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:34:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25288402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/localwitchgoblin/pseuds/localwitchgoblin
Summary: The coterie is broken. The Baali cult was defeated. Vampires were diablerized. Seattle is safe. Life should be good.Of course, in real life, every ending comes with some amount of tragedy. And, also, some amount of hope.--An epilogue for a vampire the masquerade campaign i played in. Also an experiment with writing styles and pacing that i kind of liked. someone told me to publish it, so here we are. might add a few extra chapters over time. also if you can guess the origin of the title you get a cookie
Series: There Existed an Addiction to Blood [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1842109
Kudos: 6





	Truth, Like Death

It's nearly Christmas.

She can't believe it's been over a year since she came to the US. Her internal clock is still in Argentina, and may very well stay there for all she knows. It feels wrong for it to be cold in December. It feels wrong for there to be snow. It feels wrong to be alive. 

But she's not here for that kind of introspection anymore. The Coterie broke up a while ago, and took the last of her self-pity with it. They weren't a family, really, but maybe close enough to one for it to hurt. Maybe enough for it to matter, just a little bit--

(She doesn't remember where the others went. Is Baptiste Keeper of Elysium now? What happened to Bunny and Katie? Where did Nora go? The noise hasn't come back, but her brain was never sane to begin with. Remembering was hard, focus was harder, and--)

The apartment mural is incomplete.

So is the one outside the no-tell motel she's been casing. It's a scrawled mess of street art, nigh illegible, and not even very good artistically speaking. But it had been bothering her, itching that part of her brain that doesn't let go of things, that used to _speak_ before the world went silent. With paint covered fingers, it holds her face and sings. Hums. Breathes. In through her nose, out through her mouth. If she closes her eyes, she can read its lips. If she can just get close enough to _touch…_.

But that wasn't what she was here for, not really. Reaching back out to the Cobweb wasn't on her list tonight. 

She pulls out her notebook and scribbles out the sketch. Her hands tingle in their fingerless gloves, and a laugh rings out in her ears, clear as bells and heavy as towers. Whatever it is, it's clear to her. Clearly, Malkavian. Clearly, calling out for someone to find. Clearly, what she's looking for.

She snaps the book shut and people-watches for a bit, keeping her eyes on the crowds. It's snowing; light, fluffy flakes catching on her hair even as she shakes them out with a breathless huff. The people walking on the street don't seem to notice she's not breathing, that the steam in front of her mouth is from the coffee and not her.

Must be nice, she thinks. She notices it every day.

A man drops money into her cup of coffee, thinking she's homeless. It's not a big leap, with her thick coat and ratty jeans, fingerless gloves and busted sneakers. She fishes the dollar bill out of the liquid with a mumbled thanks, and he carries on.

She counts to fifteen, picks up her things, and follows him.

He wasn't breathing, either.

Most nights, she ends up stalking some newbie vampire that doesn't know how to fake it properly. She can spot them pretty fast, having been there herself, but her paranoia eggs her on. Tells her to follow, to look underneath. Newbies get caught up in bullshit all the time, _she_ should know. And it's good practice for her skills. Good for her to get out of the apartment, instead of staring at the mural.

This night, the man crosses the street and enters the motel. She walks past the entrance and into the back alley.

More graffiti lines the walls. More tingles in her fingers. More scratching at the cellar door. 

Malkavians make for terrible liars.

She finds the backdoor locked, and a blinking security camera pointed across from the light. With her luck, they’ve already spotted her, but she pretends to be drunk regardless and tumbles against the back steps. She squints against the light and presses her head to the wall, waiting, listening. 

Listening.

 _Listening_.

A woman in a black and red raincoat opens the door. Cande leaps up and tackles her, pressing a hand against her mouth as they tumble into the building. She feels curses spat against her skin, but no fangs, and breath comes out hot and strong from the woman’s nostrils. 

She’s a living one. 

Cande looks deep into her eyes and whispers _Forget_. The woman struggles for a moment, then goes limp. Cande kicks the door shut behind them, and steps over the woman while she stares off into space.

Ten minutes, maybe less; Hopefully enough time to find what she needs. 

The whole place smells like blood. Maybe it isn’t noticeable to humans, but to the beast inside, it’s as obvious as the snow. A wriggle of need curls in her gullet like a finger, begging and beckoning, pulling her towards a locked room. 

She needs a keycard.

She declines, and kicks the door in instead.

There are bodies inside, fresh and old. _Living_ bodies, hooked up to IVs and bags and tubes and wires, being drained alive. Some appear to be comatose, but others groan and scream as she enters. One in particular falls over in the chair, clearly delirious, and starts trying to crawl towards the door.

Factory farming, people in the Camarilla started calling it. Kidnapping people and keeping them alive for weeks on end to squeeze them for blood. The bodies were being dumped in the bay and washing up on the shore.

A huge masquerade breach.

She shuts the door. Seven minutes left on her timetable, maybe more. She tugs on the darkness around her like a quilt, feels it seep into her skin. It’s cold and comforting, like her father’s hands on a feverish forehead, and it sings in hushed hums and murmurs. It’s a deep contrast to the noise she was used to; gentle where the noise is harsh, suffocates where the other strangles. 

It’s useful for staying hidden, at least. Three men round the corner, two of them dressed so obviously as _‘Vampires’_ that she almost drops the shroud. Their chains jingle as they pass her, but the third one stops. 

And looks at her.

There’s paint on his fingers.

 _Shit_. The Malkavian.

She reaches for her gun. The shroud around her shoulders is yanked off as she pulls the trigger once, twice, incendiary rounds lighting up the dim hallway. Both rounds end up in the wall behind the Malkavian, and she bum rushes him as he goes for a knife at his belt. 

The two behind her don’t catch up until she’s got their comrade held hostage, back to the wall and gun to his head, checking the hallways for where to go next. The Cobweb hums beneath the base of her brain, calling out to her with another member so literally close at hand. It wants her to go left. Up the stairs and onto the roof, where she can leap off and escape. 

A shot rings out next to her ear.

She fires once into the Malkavian’s brain and goes right. 

Howls of anguish follow her. The tell-tale sounds of fury and frenzy. She rounds a corner and pulls at the darkness again, feeling herself flicker into the void for a minute as she stops dead in her tracks. The frenzied vampire runs past her, while the other, more cautious one steps slowly with his gun drawn. 

Twins, she notes. They’re identical twins. She puts a bullet in each of them and watches them crumble to ash. 

Four minutes. She’s already wasted so much _time_ . She rushes down the hall, feeling with the threads of the Cobweb, seeking and searching and _listening…_.

Stairs to her left, leading downwards and downwards-- she takes them two at a time. Voices rise up through the stairwell, echoing off the walls, and she calls on the blood to obfuscate her once more. Two more people burst from a room at the bottom of the stairs and miss her completely as they head upwards, leaving the door swinging wide open.

The smell of blood once again wells up to meet her, greeting the beast like a gentle hand held out to a rabid dog. 

She’ll have to feed soon with all the activity tonight, but Lara is visiting family and Adriel is at work. Somehow, in the midst of all this action, skipping meals because her partners are out of pocket manages to feel so _mundane_. 

What isn’t mundane is when she slips through the door undetected and finds a pentacle slathered in blood on the floor. It’s not infernalist, that she can tell-- perhaps Tremere. But that isn’t what worries her.

What worries her are the four people surrounding it, all huddled on crates or metal chairs, clearly agitated. Much more than she bargained for. 

The door slams shut. The two from before came back down.

“ _Fuck_ ," says a tall man in overalls. His voice is thick and his words come out in a pinch behind an unlit cigarette, “They got dusted.”

Cande slips silently behind a crate as the man sits down. The other man, wearing a black and white striped beanie, starts pacing. Everyone else stays in stunned silence, waiting, disbelieving.

“You’re fucking kidding, _all of them?”_

“Mark, John, and Jamie. Hel got her brain scrambled, but she’s alive. She doesn’t even remember leaving the security room.” 

“Fuck!”

“Are-- are they still here? Are we gonna fuckin’ die!?” cries a woman in ripped jeans and a worn out sweater. She bounces her leg like an anxious gazelle.  
  
“No one’s gonna die,” the man in the overalls snaps, “Keep your fucking mouths shut, and no one’s gonna die. This is a setback, nothin’ more.”

A roar comes up from the others. Several rise from their seats.

“Jamie was the only one who knew the fucking ritual, Hank!” 

“He barely remembered it, anyways!” ‘Hank’ shouts back, “Fucking psycho, he didn’t even know where he was half the time. We don’t even know if he could _do_ the ritual, it’s not like he was a damn Tremere.”

“He was our last chance!” the sweater woman screams into her hands, clearly frustrated, “He was our last chance, and you fucking blew it by sending him out there!”

Cande tunes them out to let them argue. Taking on six people at once was low on her list of priorities. It’d be best to hide and wait for them to open the door so she could slip out undetected. She settles behind the crate and waits, filtering the information as it comes.

Something something, blood ritual. Something something, Jamie knowing Tremere secrets. Something something, no hope, now. All of it very interesting, very boring, and punctuated by swear words. It’s the kind of drama she’s missed since the end of the Coterie, but only a little. The shouting matches always did a number on her, especially before the noises stopped.

Honestly, she isn’t sure why she’s still around. She only went so far into being a Hound for the Sheriff because Nora disappeared. Then Bunny, then Katie. She wanted missions to go looking for them, but other things always came up. Never enough time, enough resources. Eventually, she stopped asking. Eventually, they stopped sending her out. 

Freelance work keeps her on the radar, but, eventually, they will tell her to stop. At this rate, she’s better off holing up in her apartment and painting until she starves to death. She’d dedicate all her works to Baptiste, let him do with them what he wants--

“This is all because he met that stupid bitch, Nora, isn’t it?”

Ah. Thinking time over. Listening time now.

“Shut up,” says a man with no less than three piercings in his face, “It’s only ‘cause of her that we’ve even gotten this far--”  
  
“This far!?” the sweater woman screams, “We’re in the basement of a shit motel being hunted by the Cammies ‘cause of her!”

“We don’t know if it’s the Cammies,” Hank tries.

“Who else would it be!?” says the man in the beanie, “Shit, I should have never gotten involved in this, I should have just-- just stayed the fuck home.”

Nothing was going to get done like this. She waits until the shouting picks up again before she reloads her clip, counting the bullets with her fingers while still under the cover of darkness. Nine bullets, six people. 

She stands and creeps behind a middle aged, balding man in a suit. He’s been quietly cursing under his breath the whole time, clearly agitated and clearly unwilling to do anything but sulk. Across from him is a punk, and if Cande could aim just right….

She pulls the trigger. 

Both of them go down into a pile of ash. Sweater Woman and Metal Face scream, while Hank and Beanie grab their weapons. Cande shoots Metal Face in the leg before he can stand. He goes down screaming, cursing, and swatting at the fire creeping up his pants leg. Sweater Woman runs for the door, while Hank and Beanie throw the crates and chairs around, looking for her in the darkness. 

She shoots Sweater Woman in the back before she can reach the door. She goes down screaming, on fire from the incendiary round. Beanie finds Cande soon after, and he beats her over the head with a pipe. 

She sees stars. 

They’re just as pretty as the ones in Argentina.

Hank comes running up with a shotgun and she has enough sense to shoot him in the gut before he can level at her, and again in the shoulder before Beanie crushes her hand with his boot. There’s bones breaking, snapping like twigs, and she can almost feel it rocket up her spine. The pipe comes down again and again, breaking her nose and busting her lip open. 

She catches it the fourth time. Then, catches Beanie’s eyes.

Her own go blank.

Mentally, she reaches up and out to him. The blood in her curdles, surges, the beast rising from its slouch to catch a good look at its prey. Like an arrow, it pierces. It delves. Into the deep dark depths, it goes, pulling and tugging at the threads in his mind. 

He’s a thin-blood. And so very scared. They all are. His life has gone downhill since the embrace, some reckless kindred having drained and revived him for no reason at all. All he wants is to survive, but with the Camarilla putting the Scourge out on all thin-bloods, he’s run out of time. The ritual was supposed to save him. Save all of them.

She holds those feelings in her arms like a mother, whispering carefully into its ear as it cries out to her, begging to be soothed. 

The beast calls, demanding she break him. It’d be so easy, she’d just have to open the door to the Cobweb. She’d just have to show him what she, herself, sees every time she closes her eyes. Flood him. Drown him. Fill the vessel until it _cracks_. 

Like smothering a baby in the crib. It’d be just too _easy._

Cande untangles a thread.

“ **It’s too late** ,” she whispers, opening the door to the Cobweb just a crack. Voices flood her mind, and she lets them speak for her, “Catch the turtle, spurn the hare, a lost little animal caught in the snare-- you are alone, alone, _alone_. The ritual would have done nothing. You should have died the moment those teeth pierced your wrist.”

Beanie reels back as though struck. Struggling, if only for a moment, against the echo she pushes further and further into his brain. He lets her go, clutching at his head and shaking, the pipe bouncing off her face and clattering to the floor. 

She gets up. The gun doesn’t fit properly in her broken fingers, but between the screaming and the fire and the smell of Vitae splattered all over the place, she can’t bring herself to care. She pops a round into Beanie’s left leg to ground him, then puts another between his eyes.

Three people left. Two bullets left. Metal Face is cowering in a corner. Sweater Woman lies motionless in front of the door, burning to ashes. Hank growls at her, trying to level the shotgun at her again, but she kicks it out of his grasp and breaks his hand for good measure. 

“You’re Hank, yes?” she slurs out from her busted lip and broken nose, “I heard you earlier. You’re Hank. How are you tonight, Hank?” 

“Fuck you,” he spits.

“Not very nice, Hank,” she says as she reloads her gun, “I’m trying not to lose it here. Malkavian, you see. I don’t want to kill you--”

He _literally_ spits at her this time.

She wipes the bloody spittle from her face. “I don’t. I’m here for information, that’s all. Would you have told me your secrets if I asked politely?”

He glares at her in silence. 

“See?” she crouches down to his level, keeping the gun pointed at him, “I just want to know one thing: do you know a Tremere named Nora? You can nod if you want.”

His glare deepens. He aims a kick at her, but she grips his thigh like a vice and presses the barrel of her gun to his knee.

“Please, don’t do that again. I will blow your leg out. I don’t want to, but I will.”

He stills at that. She’s glad. Killing and hurting was never what she wanted to do. 

“Jesus fucking Christ, you’re a psycho,” Hank grumbles. She barely hides her wince.

“Do you know a Tremere named Nora?” she asks again, pressing the barrel harder into his knee, “Yes or no.”

“Yes,” he bites out.

“How do you know her?” 

“She’s an evil fucking bitch who led us on, that’s how--” 

Cande points the gun skyward and fires, earning a yelp from Hank and a whimper from Metal Face. She presses the gun back to his knee, eyes never leaving Hank’s face.

“Try again.”

“All right, all right, _Jesus--_ ” he adjusts is position, sitting up so his neck isn’t cramped against the crate, “She taught Jamie how to do Thaumaturgy. Or, he said she did, I don’t fuckin’ know. Could’a been lyin’, could’a been just plain crazy, but we were desperate. So, we believed him.”

“Was Jamie the Malkavian?”

“Yes.”

“Malkavians can’t learn Thaumaturgy.” Partial lie. Malkavians could, if bonded properly, but--

“... _Shit.”_

He didn’t know that. 

So, he had never met Nora personally. And would almost certainly not know where she was.

The lead was bogus. 

She sighs through her nose, then stands. 

“Sorry. About the mess. I won’t bother you anymore,” she says, picking the shotgun off the ground. It’s in decent enough shape, if worn around the edges. She hefts the weight and slings it over her shoulder. 

“You don’t wanna know why we did this?” Hank asks, apparently astounded by that fact, “The factory farm upstairs? The fucking pentacle on the floor? The blood magic?”

She thinks for a moment. She scoped out the place because the street art bothered her. Because all Malkavians are supremely nosy, looking for connections to greater and grander things, even the ones that gave up their line to the Cobweb for horrible silence. Because it was something _to do_ , now that there was nothing that could be done. 

Their reasons mattered just as much as hers. 

“No,” she says, “Not really.”

She walks out the door.

It’s little work dousing the shower curtains in an empty room with liquor from the mini bar, and even less work getting the fire to spread and grow. Contrary to what the Camarilla thought, people didn’t _want_ to believe in vampires. Occam’s Razor: the explanation with the least amount of assumptions is often the correct one. Cheap motel plus fire equals ash. Gunshots? What gunshots? Must have been firecrackers. 

She covers herself in shadow and pulls the fire alarm on her way out. 

People gather in the streets and she follows the flow of the crowds, eventually being deposited in front of a bus stop. The bus gets delayed by the fire trucks and police cars, but it comes eventually, and she’s able to hop stops until she gets to the apartment. The cat, Oatmeal, is in the front lobby and hisses at her in greeting.

It’s funny, she thinks, listening to her keys jingle as she unlocks the door. She’s lived there for a while now, and it still doesn’t feel like hers. It’s just the Haven. It was for everyone. 

Now, it’s all empty except for her.

“Hello, Cande.”

And Nora, sitting in the living room chair. 

The door slams shut behind her and takes all the air out of the room with it. Cande doesn’t blink. Doesn’t move. Nora stays still, as well, sitting comfortably in the cheap IKEA chair they bought months and months ago. If she is unnerved by Cande’s silence, she doesn’t show it.

Somehow, that unnerves Cande more.

“Hello, Nora.”

“You’ve been busy,” Nora says breezily.

“You’ve been missing,” Cande says back. 

“Not really,” and she pauses in that way she always does. Picking over her words like produce at the market, debating the pros and cons of any particular cucumber or hock of meat, “Have you been looking for me?”

“You already know the answer to that.” 

Nora hums, tapping her fingers on the shaft of her cane. They were never really good at talking to each other. Talking was Bunny and Baptiste’s job. Baptiste and Cande’s job. Filling the world up with words, because the silence was just too intimate to bear. It let them think. 

Just like now.

“Well, here I am,” says Nora with a lazy wave of her arms. The tip of her cane clanks against the hardwood, sending a tiny shockwave across the floor. It causes the lamp in the corner to wiggle. It’s too easy to imagine it falling and cracking Nora’s skull wide open.

Cande drops her keys into the bowl by the door. “Here you are.”

Nora says nothing while Cande removes her coat and snow-covered sneakers, leaving them to dry by the vent at the door. She continues her silence, even as Cande gets a bag of blood from the freezer and defrosts it in the microwave. The most Cande gets out of her is a mumbled thanks as a mug of warm blood is placed on the coffee table in front of her, and the most Cande gives in return is a nod of the head. 

Cande settles into the tattered couch, curling her knees up to her chest and sipping her own mug of blood like the hot chocolate her father used to make. It’s not the same, but the blood warms her all the way down, and slowly, surely, her bones begin to reset themselves.

Noise trembles just below the surface of silence, however. A hum. Like tides beneath a frozen lake, cold and swirling and reaching for her through the void. Her fingers tremble. Her head begins to ache. Questions, questions, questions-- answers in reach, hanging low on the branch, none of them pleasant.

She plucks at one anyways.

“Why did you leave?”

Nora hums. Turns thoughts over in her head, nearly loud enough for Cande to hear. “Why did you stay?”

A piercing kind of question. Cande doesn’t like it very much. She sips her blood and mumbles, “I had nowhere else to go.”

“I suppose I _left_ for a similar reason,” Nora says, twirling the cane in her fingers, “The ritual I did for Baptiste… it painted a target on my back. Tremere are, ah… nosy. They would have found out how I did it. I could not stay.”

Cande nods. Her shoulders sag a little under the weight of those words, and she bites her lip.

“Did you know this would happen?”

“Yes.”

“Then why did you do it?”

She’s silent for a moment, then peers over the rim of her dark sunglasses. Her red eye looks near bloody in the dark, like wine waiting to spill from its glass.

“Paranoia.”

Cande does not gape at her, but comes close. 

“Don’t give me that look,” she sighs, pushing her glasses back up her nose, “Baptiste knew too much; he could have spilled everything to Lewis. I did not trust him. I… could not.”

“So, you broke the bond,” Cande says slowly, “Consequences be damned.”

“ _No_ ,” Nora bites sharply, leaning forwards and stamping the ground with her cane, “It was immediate survival against future discomfort. If Lewis asked Baptiste _anything_ , he would have been compelled to tell him. And all our hard work would have been for nothing.”

Cande goes silent, curling tighter around her drink and leaning hard into the sofa. She understood the logic of it all, of course. Baptiste’s blood bond was a huge liability, even before Lewis’ involvement in the cult came to light. It made perfect sense to feed the paranoia for a night in hopes of continued survival.

But, then, why did she feel so sad?

“That must have been hard for you,” Cande mumbles over the rim of her mug, “I’m sorry.”

The fight seems to bleed out of Nora for a moment. She slumps a little in the chair and goes back to twirling the cane in her fingers. 

“It’s fine. I did what I had to. We all did.”

That statement feels more pointed than Nora probably intended. Cande glances about the room. It was here, in the dream, that she met _Him_. That she drank from Iscariot and became inextricably tied to the Baali under Damascus’ order. The night she made a deal with a literal devil, all to get the noise to stop.

She had hoped it would end. She had hoped losing the Cobweb would shatter her to pieces. She had hoped to die.

She had hoped for a lot of things, before she learned to stop hoping. 

“Did I ever tell you why I did it?” she asks.

Nora’s brow quirks. “Did what?”

“Drank from Iscariot,” Cande elaborates, “Did I ever tell you why I did that?”

“You… did not, I don’t think. I don’t recall,” Nora says slowly, as though it only just dawned on her, “To help us solve the case, I presume?”

“No.”

“Ah,” Nora nods, pursing her lips awkwardly, “Then--”

“Damascus said I would die if I did,” she speaks plainly, looking at a stain on the rug, “Real, final death. He never specified how, just that I’d die if I accepted the mission. So, I did.”

Nora does not move. Eventually, Cande looks up at her, notes the furrow in her brow, and is… surprised? By the empathy there. 

“I didn’t…” Nora starts, then sighs, “No, I knew. I knew you weren’t okay. I’m… sorry. That I didn’t say anything.”

“It’s--”

“No, it isn’t.”

Cande lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding, feeling her shoulders sag under the weight of it all. “No. It isn’t.”

Nora finally picks up her mug of blood, swirling it without taking a sip. 

“Where’s Trevor?” Cande asks.

Nora snaps her fingers, and Trevor appears in the doorway to Cande’s room. 

“Oh.”

“Hello,” he says. He doesn’t even have the dignity to look sheepish.

“Our car is outside, if you want to join us,” Nora says. It’s enough to give Cande whiplash as she snaps her head over to the other woman. 

“Excuse me?”

“We’re leaving Seattle,” she says casually, “I came here to ask if you want to join me.”

The world goes liquid under Cande's seat.

" _Why ? "_

"I told you, I--" Nora starts, giving her a look over the rim of her glasses. It's biting and with little patience for fools, but Cande cuts her off anyways. 

"No, why are you asking _me?"_

That gets Nora to pause. She hums, picking over her words again, or perhaps asking herself the same question.

“You’re… smart. Neurotic, but smart,” she sighs, setting the mug down on the coffee table once more, “You have… skills that I do not have. And you’re a decent enough investigator.”

Cande huffs a laugh at the backhanded compliment, but remains silent. Nora looks irritated, but does not comment on it. 

“I’m asking,” she says and straightens out her coat with a sharp yank, “Because I want you to come with me.”

Silence falls between them. The floor still hasn’t stopped wiggling, but the walls are no longer melted and the noise stays at the gates. Something in her lurches at the idea of moving away, at running. Something deep, primal, and angry wants her to stay. It wants to tear Seattle apart.

She lifts her head, and asks, “Where are you going?” 

“Away from here.”

“Not an answer.”

“Phoenix,” Nora admits, “Or Memphis. I don’t think we’ll stay there, but anywhere is better than here. This city will _ruin_ itself, Cande. It cannot stagnate forever, it will simply rot from the inside out. You know this.”

She does. The noise she runs from comes to her in her sleep, sometimes. It brings dreams of a world in the midst of decay. Of rust and moss, a forest encroaching on the city, swallowing it up in a wave of greenery that starts from the heart. She sees people on the streets being inseparable from the corpses that litter them. Funerals no longer held, for the corpses must be preserved for the sake of familiarity, for the comfort that comes from the known. 

Living no longer matters. Death is no longer a threat. They are indistinguishable. 

Cande closes her eyes. 

And there’s a knock on the door.

“Sorry,” She says, wiping her mouth on her sleeve and walking to the door, steps wobbly as a fawn, “I’ll get it.”

She looks through the peephole. A familiar blond-haired twink glowers at her, as though there weren’t a door between them at all.

 _Fuck_.

Baptiste.

“I know you’re in there, Cande,” Baptiste calls, growl set deep in his voice, “Open the door. We need to talk.”

She glances back at Nora, who calmly sips her drink. Nora waves her on-- _‘Go ahead_.’

“Open the _doooooooooor!”_

Cande sighs, pops the chain-lock in, and opens the door a crack.

“Hey, Baptiste,” she greets.

“ _‘Hey, Baptiste_ ,’” he mocks, “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say? ‘Hey, Baptiste! Long time no see! Been doing great without you, getting myself beat the fuck up and setting places on fire!’”

She closes the door on him.

_“Bitch!”_

Cande slumps against the door, looking to Nora for help. Nora, for her part, scrolls through her phone and sips her blood. It’s immediately obvious she will not, and doesn’t want to, get involved. A bitter part of Cande both understands, and deeply resents her for it. 

“I am in _hysterics_ , Cande. I am losing my fucking mind. Open the Goddamn door, _right now_.”

“No, thank you, I’m okay,” Cande blurts. She claps her hand across her mouth.

_“Open the fucking door!”_

Her phone buzzes in her pocket. A text message from an unknown number reads:

_‘Probably best to keep him out there, no?_

_Unless you like getting screamed at.’_

She looks up. Nora’s face is illuminated by the blue light of her screen. A single finger presses to her lips. There’s knocking behind her, growing more insistent as the seconds pass, as well as a steady growl of frustration that grows louder and louder. 

She opens the door a crack again.

“Why did you stop being a hound?” Baptiste bites. She winces at the venom in his voice, “What the fuck were you thinking becoming a cop, anyways? You could have just hung out with me and been fine! Instead, you join up with Jingy and then, what-- get fired? What the fuck!”

She thinks for a moment, feeling Nora’s eyes on her back. 

“I needed something to do,” she admits, “They give me assignments.”

“Not anymore, they don’t,” he snaps. She cows a little at that. He’d been talking to the Sheriff, evidently, “And you’ve been fucking up too much with that freelance shit-- you’re becoming a liability they can’t afford. They’re thinking of killing you!”

She knows that. Not even saving the city from a Methusulah could keep you from becoming a liability if you fucked up enough. But, she pushed the envelope anyways, not even sure _why_ aside from old habits dying hard. 

Hah. Dying hard.

“I wanted to help,” she admits feebly.

“Then help yourself,” Baptiste spits. He all but throws the words into her face, clearly having no patience for any excuses she might have, “Stop fucking around. Stop throwing yourself at things that don’t need you. I’m telling you this as your fucking _friend_ . _Cut it out_.” 

Friend.

It’d been a long time since she heard that word used in that context. Months, in fact.

“Yeah,” she mumbles and looks down at his expensive shoes. Givenchy, she thinks, “Okay. I will.”

He huffs at her, crossing his arms. “Bullshit.”

“No,” she shakes her head and feels her own thoughts tumble around in the darkness, “No, I’m going to stop. It’s… it’s not worth it anymore. You don’t have to worry. I’m sorry.”

When she looks up, he’s staring at her, stunned. Like he was expecting some kind of fight, like she’s supposed to argue with him over whether or not she should keep investigating. It’s heartbreaking, how surprised he is to hear that she’s giving up. 

“I’m sorry, Baptiste,” she says, “I promise. I’m not going to worry you anymore. Goodnight.”

“What do you--”

She shuts the door, locking it for good measure.

“Cande. What are you going to do?”

She walks to the couch and picks up her mug.

“ _Cande_.”

Nora offers up hers, and Cande takes them both to the kitchen.

“ _Cande!”_

She washes them both in the sink, letting the rush of water drown out the rant that comes dribbling through the door like leaking pipes. Staccato rhythms and curses, marked by the occasional rise in voice, barely heard by the hush of running water. He’s half pissed, half worried, but there’s nothing he can do. She won’t let him in.

She can't. If she does, she might change her mind.

After an agonizing wash, the dishes are done and Baptiste is gone. Nora waits in her chair, scrolling through various apps on her phone. She’s humming some old rock tune, and it’s the most life Cande’s seen from the woman in the entire time she’s known her. It’s strange enough to knock the world off-kilter, leaving Cande feeling topsy-turvy in ways she can’t begin to explain.

Cande leans against the doorway, eyes closed, and feels… calm. Sad, but calm.

“Okay.”

Nora stops humming. She hears her cane tap against the floor. “Sorry?”

“I’ll come with you,” she elaborates and opens her eyes to look at Nora. “But… why didn’t you ask Baptiste? Or Bunny and Katie?”

Nora purses her lips. “Baptiste has too much tying him here,” she answers honestly, “He would refuse. And Bunny, I… haven’t been able to find him. I think he left, too.”

Cande nods. “And Katie?”

“She’s with Saul-- Sullivan. I doubt she’ll want to leave.” She straightens her back after a moment, “You weren’t my last choice, Cande. I’m asking because I want you to come with me.”

Somehow, that feels like a lie. It actually makes Cande crack a smile, earning a confused look from Trevor. She smothers it before Nora can see. 

“Okay.”

“Okay?” Nora blinks at her from behind her sunglasses, eyebrows raised. It’s funny how surprised she sounds, asking that.

“I’ll come with you,” Cande says, “Let me pack my things.”

The weight seems to come off Nora’s shoulders. It’s a split second moment of vulnerability that puts the world into perspective for a moment-- regardless of how cold and controlled a person seems, no one wants to be alone. 

Nora snaps her fingers again.

Trevor slips into Cande’s room, and she bolts to follow him, nearly tripping on the coffee table and crashing to the floor. On her bed, next to Rosario the IKEA shark, is a canvas duffle bag she doesn’t remember owning, unzipped and already packed with her entire wardrobe. 

She glances at the plastic bin containing her underwear. Open and empty. She pinches her eyes shut against the oncoming migraine.

“I’ll--” Trevor starts.

“Go. Please,” Cande interrupts, then thinks, “Wait, how long have you been here?”

“Don’t answer that, Trevor,” Nora calls.

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, slipping past Cande and closing the door behind him.

Cande sighs into her hands and pushes the hair back from her face. Her unmentionables aside, at least her paints were untouched, as were the sheets covering her walls. She grabs a plastic shopping bag from the bundle under her bed-- old habits from Kirlian-- and sets to work organizing and storing her supplies. She doesn’t know how much time she’ll have to paint, going cross country like that, but….

Well. She tucks a few sketchbooks into the duffle just in case. A pencil and charcoal box, too, while she decides which paints to sacrifice. Her watercolor palettes could probably come with, but her acrylics and oil sticks were a different story-- especially the oils.

They were a gift from Baptiste. She still remembers the day she got them-- broken and used, evidently as crayons by someone without any solvent. Baptiste kissed the side of her head and hugged her, complaining loudly in her ear that they were the most expensive thing in the thrift store. He demanded she paint him something as payment.

She did. Her fingers drift to the fabric covering the walls, and she pulls the sheets down one by one.

Baptiste, Bunny, Nora, Katie, Sullivan, Trevor, Lara, Adriel… they were all there. All in various states of completion, but all unfinished. Katie’s was probably the most incomplete, still only a sketch on the wall with some base paint to cover up the cracks in the plaster, while Bapstiste’s only lacked the eyes. 

Her grandest project. Getting down the faces of everyone she knew in America, all the people who changed her life.

It only made sense that it would stay incomplete. 

She fetches a pen from her cup, and writes out a letter to Baptiste. All of her works, all of the things she can’t take with her, they’re all for him. Dedicated to him. Even the mural on the apartment walls. She held up her end of the bargain, completed her last promise. She’ll drop the letter off before sunrise and give him her key.

This is not _running away_. It’s a new beginning, somewhere far away from here. She has no idea where Phoenix or Memphis is-- but it’s not Seattle, and that will have to do. 

Her phone buzzes with a text. She checks it. 

It’s Lara.

‘ _Where r u going babe?’_

Shit. Cande forgot she could do that. Her thumbs hover over the keys when another message pops up.

 _‘Had a vision. saw u packing ur stuff. u good?_ ’

Good question. No good answers. Bite the bullet?

 _‘Babe?_ ’

 _‘I’m thinking of leaving Seattle,’_ she types. Her hands shake a little as she does, wondering if maybe Lara could see that, too, _‘Nora wants me to go. I don’t know if I should stay._ ’

She waits. No answer. She swallows her own heart, and types, _‘Will you come with me?_ ’

_‘Gimme a couple days to sort things. when r u leaving?’_

_‘I don’t know. Tonight maybe? I’ll have to ask.’_

_‘Lemme know babe stay safe!’_

Lara’s too good to her. Too sweet. It hits her, then, that she’s doing this. She’s really, actually doing this-- she’s leaving. She’s going away from everything she’s ever known, again, but on purpose this time. 

If she had a stomach, she'd be sick.

"Nora?" she calls, "When are we leaving? You never said."

"I was hoping tonight," Nora calls back, "Why?" 

"Lara wants to come."

" _Lara?"_

"My girlfriend--"

There's a small clatter and the tapping of a cane as Nora rushes to stand in the doorway.

“Your _what?”_

Cande blinks at her. “My girlfriend. The woman we met at IKEA.”

Nora is unreadable for a long moment, though clearly more ruffled than before. She pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs, “We can’t take just anyone.”

“She’s not just anyone,” Cande clarifies, cringing at the sound of it, “She-- She’s a mage. A psychic, in fact.”

“And what of your stalker?” Nora asks pointedly, looking over the rim of her sunglasses, “The junkie.”

“Adriel?” Shit. She hadn’t thought about that. Could she take him with her? “He’s-- He’s useful. I’d like for him to come, too. We could use the extra hands--”

“No,” Nora interrupts, speaking plainly, “We already have Trevor. Maybe-- _maybe_ Lara, your girlfriend, but that’s only because she’s a mage. Adriel would be a liability if we took him.” 

Liability. Cande could play that game. Like Jenga. 

“He’d be a bigger liability if we left him here,” she points out, wriggling her piece out of play, “Because he’d track me-- us-- down. And possibly lead the Camarilla right to us.”

“Then we kill him.”

And, just like Jenga, one misstep can lead to total collapse. 

“Not if you want me to come with you, Nora,” she says, wrangling her brain to bring all her focus to bear. Nora’s eyes narrow venomously, but she presses on, “I won’t go with you if you kill him. He’s my friend. And you don’t know him well enough to decide whether he’ll be useful. I do. So, let me talk to him and see if he’ll come with us.”

Nora stares at her. Hard. The mismatch of her eyes-- so similar to her own, yet so subtly _off--_ makes Cande dizzy, and it takes all of her willpower to stare back just as firmly. She isn’t going to give up on this. She had so few friends these days, she isn’t going to let one slip through her fingers if she didn’t have to. Even if… even if that meant letting her only chance at freedom go. 

The second hand on the clock ticks by, achingly, each clink of the gears echoing in the room. So, too, do the gears behind Nora’s glasses as she considers her options. She could cut and run. Go it alone. Or bring on some extra baggage.

Nora taps her fingers on her cane in time with the clock.

The tower leans. 

And goes still. 

“Fine. But you’ll be responsible for him,” Nora sighs, shaking her head, “If anything goes wrong, it’s on your head. Understand?”

“I do.”

“Good,” she turns and steps out of the doorway, heading towards the entrance, “I’ll be in town for another night. That’s it. If you can’t convince them to come, I will leave without you. No exceptions.” 

“Okay,” Cande nods, “Thank you--”

“Don’t,” Nora snipes, shooting her another look from the corner of her eye. It’s the green one this time, glowing in the dim light like uranium glass. It pierces her heart like a harpoon, threatening to wrench it from her chest, “This is not a favor. Do _not_ mistake it for one.”

And with that, she leaves. Just as silently as the snow melting on the heating units outside, not a trace of her presence but a chill in the air and the subtle offness that only comes with being a stranger in one’s home. As though Cande suddenly wasn’t welcome there, what with all the talk of leaving Seattle for good. 

Even the mural seems to watch her like she watches the passerby. As though she hasn’t dedicated hours of her unlife to detailing those eyes, sketching them endlessly on paper before translating it to the wall. It had to be perfect. They had to be perfect. 

The eyes all remain unpainted, though. Even Baptiste’s. Hollow, beige voids, like someone was ready to cut holes in them with scissors to make masks of their likeness. Incomplete, imperfect, and soon to be abandoned for good.

She packs her things and shuts the door. She’ll be sleeping on the couch for the next few days.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading lol


End file.
